Love Difference, the most important activity of the politicsoffice
of Cittadellarte, is a non-profit association promoting a Mediterranean
Cultural Network.
The sailing boat “Love Difference” retraces the migration
streams of the Mediterranean sea and becomes carrier of individual stories.
The Love Difference Tour will retrace with a small sailing boat the
routes of the major immigration streams crossing the Mediterranean sea.
In August 2005 it will sail the highly frequented passage from Libia
to Italy, via the shores of Sicily and Lampedusa. The aim of the retracing
is to get close to the reality of the immigrants and to try to understand
more about the phenomenon than it is possible through reports in television
and newspapers.
As both a politic and an artistic movement, Love Difference will launch
a series of artistic actions, didactic workshops and cultural events,
that will involve both the immigrants and the people living in the area.
These actions are aimed at revealing the individual aspect of immigration
as well as they are trying to show the mechanisms of immigration politics
from a different, an artistic viewpoint. Starting from these interventions,
the Love Difference boat will become an archive and carrier of personal
stories and elements of traditions that the immigrants have to leave
behind them. To reach Europe, they often have to literally throw overboard
a large part of their identity, like their passports. Hoping for a future
life in Europe therefore means to have to cancel important parts of
their past lives.
Love Difference has proposed to the Unidee 2004 artists in residence
to present a project for an intervention into the Mediterranean area.
3 of the residents, Pratul Kumar Dash, t s Beall and Walid Maw'ed have
presented a project.